The Black Baroness gs-4

by Dennis Wheatley

  'Thank you,' said the Captain. 'Mine is Renetter. Would you be kind enough to put your hands above your head?' He turned quickly to a sergeant. 'Search this man for arms and examine his papers.'

  Gregory shrugged, but he did not put up his hands and he waved away the sergeant as he said: 'I suppose you think I'm a Fifth Columnist?'

  'That's it,' the Captain nodded. 'Ever since we set foot in Norway we've been meeting gentlemen of your kidney who've been spreading false rumours and telling us to evacuate positions when there was no need to do so; we've developed special techniques for dealing with people like you.'

  'Well, in this case you're wrong,' Gregory smiled, producing his passport. 'Run your eye over that, and if you think it's a fake you'd better come up with me to the hospital. Langdon-Forbes, who was attached to the British Legation in Oslo, is there and he will vouch for my identity.'

  'I see.' Captain Renetter looked a little undecided. He had been trained for good honest fighting and he detested the uncertainties which were now thrust upon him by the Nazis' new methods of warfare.

  'Come on!' snapped Gregory. 'I'm not going to stand here to be bombed—if you are. For God's sake order your men under cover. That's the least you can do if you won't take my word for it that they'd be much better out of the town altogether; and come up and see Langdon-Forbes.'

  Puffing at a pipe that he had just lit Renetter refused to be hurried, but after a moment's thought it seemed to him that, anyhow, there could be no harm in getting his men into some of the nearby buildings, so he gave the necessary orders while the interpreter passed on to the Mayor the information about the anticipated air-raid. He then nodded to Gregory.

  'Right-oh; you'd better lead the way, and I warn you I'll shoot you if you attempt to play me any monkey tricks.'

  In this somewhat undignified manner Gregory proceeded at a swift pace up the hill, the Captain following with a quick but apparently leisurely stride. At the hospital they found everything in a bustle. The nurses and male-attendants were already shepherding the less serious cases down into the air-raid shelters which had been prepared during the past fortnight, while outside the building were three ambulances, to which others of the staff were carrying out the bedridden on stretchers.

  They found Gussy dressed and a nurse was just completing the adjustment of a sling to carry his arm.

  The lean-faced Gregory was of such a type that he might well have been taken for a dark-haired Briton, a southern German or even a Frenchman, but about Gussy there was no question at all. His beautifully-cut suit of Glenurquhart tweed positively screamed Saville Row and no one but a British diplomat could possibly have sported that long, drooping moustache in the year of grace 1940 and got away with it. Captain Renetter had hardly to exchange two sentences with him before he was confident of his bona fides; which automatically established Gregory's as well.

  'Where did you get this information?' he asked.

  'Sorry, I can't tell you,' Gregory replied promptly, 'but I'll take my oath it's authentic. There's one German armoured column advancing up the Osterdal Valley and another which will be rattling through here within a few hours. You can't possibly resist tanks, flame-throwers and ground-strafing aircraft with infantry, so the sooner you pack up and get out the better.'

  'I'm afraid I can't do that. My orders are to advance south until I contact the enemy and then to go into action.'

  'But good God, man! There's no sense in doing that when you've already been told that you'll be up against immensely superior forces! Your men will only be massacred. You'd much better get back up the valley. Blow up a bridge if you can find one, to halt their tanks, then hang on there until reinforcements reach you.'

  Renetter shook his head. 'I wouldn't care to retreat until I've at least put up some sort of a show.'

  'All right, then,' shrugged Gregory angrily, 'hang on if you insist, and ambush the tanks from houses on either side of the main street; but if you do that, it's a hundred to one that you'll be cut off and surrounded here, which is a senseless way to try to serve your country.'

  'Thanks! but I think that I'm the best judge of that,' replied the Captain a little stiffly. 'After all, I'm a soldier.'

  'True.' Gregory's eye glinted. 'I'm sure that you'll put up a jolly good show and die very gallantly. But the trouble is, my young friend, that you do not yet understand what you're up against. I, on the other hand have spent several months in Germany since the war, so I know very much more about the German Army than you do. Incidentally, I also happen to have won my Military Cross when you were still in your perambulator. However, probably you're a braver man than I am. I mean to get out before this place gets too hot to hold me.'

  'I'm sorry,' Renetter apologised, handsomely if a little awkwardly. 'I didn't mean to be rude or anything but it seemed as if you were suggesting that I should run away from the Germans.'

  'That's quite all right,' Gregory assured him with a smile; 'it's your show and you must use your own judgment, but knowing the facts I'd see to it anyhow that you leave yourself a good line of retreat open, because I'm afraid you'll need it. Best of luck to you. Come on, Gussy.'

  Together they walked out into the pale, spring sunshine. The Captain flicked his battle bowler with a smile and went off down the hill to his men while Gregory and Gussy joined the small crowd that was gathered about the three ambulances. They were now loaded up with four stretcher-cases and a nurse apiece, but the driver of the rear car was missing, as he had run off a few minutes before to collect some valuables from his house. The doctor was anxious to get the convoy started and said that they would not wait for the man if they could find another driver. Gregory at once volunteered and got into the driving-seat with Gussy on the box beside him. The doctor jumped on the leading car and the little cavalcade set off.

  The leading ambulances, moving at an easy pace on account of the injured people who formed their cargo, ran down the hill towards the main square, but Gregory did not follow. Jamming his foot down on the accelerator he tore along the side-road in which the hospital was situated and, clanging his bell to clear the way ahead, turned down a number of other side-streets towards the northern entrance to the town.

  'Hi!' exclaimed Gussy. 'Steady on! Think of your poor passengers.'

  'I am,' said Gregory grimly, swerving to avoid a farm-cart. 'If we had stayed in a column we'd have made a tempting target for a Nazi bomb once we got out on to the open road, and we need every ounce of speed this bus will give us if we're to get well clear of the others before the trouble starts. It's better for the people behind us to have a bit of a shaking-up than to be blown to bits.'

  They left the town a quarter of a mile ahead of the other two ambulances and streaked up the gradient of the valley road along which they had chased von Ziegler a fortnight earlier. When they had covered a bare three miles they heard the crash of bombs behind them but gradually the noise faded in the distance, and for the sake of the invalids inside it Gregory eased down the pace at which he was driving the ambulance.

  'Poor devils!' he muttered, suddenly.

  'You were thinking of the troops and that Captain feller,' said Gussy slowly.

  'Yes. I'd hate to have been in his shoes. I should have felt just the same about things myself. The very idea of retreating from the enemy without even firing a shot seems cowardice—particularly when one's young and it's against orders. I felt an awful cad trying to scare him into getting out, but I was right, you know.'

  'Urn; I'm afraid you were. Infantry can't possibly hold up an armoured column unless they are equipped for the job.'

  'That's what makes me so livid,' Gregory went on. 'They're going to be slaughtered because the people whose job it was to equip them were still thinking in terms of war as it was twenty-five years ago; they stand no more chance against Nazi shock-troops than the archers of mediaeval times would have stood if they had been sent against the grenadiers and batteries of artillery which took the field at Waterloo. I wish to God the whole damned Army Cou
ncil was in Lillehammer at this moment instead of that poor Captain and his boys!'

  'It's no good getting excited about it,' Gussy replied quietly, 'and it isn't really fair to blame the Generals.'

  'Oh, I know what you're going to say,' retorted Gregory, with swift sarcasm; 'it's not really the Generals'

  fault; it's the fault of the Treasury, with their eternal cheese-paring and obstruction. Every time the soldiers ask for a new weapon the Treasury argues that it isn't necessary and vetoes it on account of the expense.

  There's a lot in that, but all the same .. .'

  'No,' Gussy cut in. 'The Treasury only does its job of protecting the taxpayer. Every Government department blames the Treasury for its own shortcomings, but all the Treasury actually does is to prevent waste and try to ensure that whatever money is available is spent to the best advantage. If you really want to know at whose door you ought to place the deaths of those young men who are going to die in Lillehammer tonight when they try to halt the advance of the German armoured column, I'll tell you. It is the fault of the British public'

  'The old get-out of collective responsibility, eh? No, that won't do.

  'But it's the truth, Gregory. The fact that we're a Democracy gives us the right to elect our own Government. We've done so numerous times since the last war—and who did we elect? For years we kept that vain, visionary wind-bag, Ramsay MacDonald, in power.'

  'You mean Stanley Baldwin kept him in power,' Gregory interjected.

  'I was coming to Baldwin. MacDonald was only a small-time Pacifist, who sold his Party for the shadow of Power; and Baldwin was clever enough to use him as a stalking horse. He didn't mind the Loon from Lossiemouth posturing as P.M. for a spell now and then providing that he retained the real power himself, and either through Ramsay or as the acknowledged Chief he ruled Britain for fifteen solid years. He knew what was happening on the Continent—he admitted it in the House of Commons again and again—and made specious promises that the nation should be properly rearmed so that any threat of future aggression could be checked; but the only thing that those two cared about was remaining in power.

  They feared that if they went to the country with a rearmament programme they might lose their jobs, so they kept on promising but they did nothing whatever about it, and from having had the finest Air Force in the world Britain's air strength was allowed to shrink to sixth place. They reckoned that they could count on peace continuing for as long as they were likely to hold office and that someone else would have the job of tackling Hitler when they'd gone.'

  'And they were right,' said Gregory bitterly. "The conscientious objector died full of years and honours on a luxury liner, and the other patriot made a graceful exit after the Coronation, to the cheers of the assembled multitude, with an Earldom and a K.G. Just think of it—all that the Most Noble and Puissant Order of the Garter used to stand for. Doesn't it make you utterly sick?'

  'No. If you employ ambitious and unscrupulous men as the managers of your business you must not grumble when you find out one day that they have robbed the till. But you put your finger on it just now when you said "the cheers of the assembled multitude". I remember those cheers for Baldwin at the time of the Coronation very well. Honest Stanley had just sacked his King and the public felt that he had handled a tricky situation remarkably well. Handling tricky situations was his long suit. Read your Hansard and see how for year after year he effectively spiked the guns of men like Churchill and Beaverbrook, causing them to appear to be ambitious trouble-makers when they were really only trying to bring home to the nation the frightful peril into which it was drifting. But honest Stan got away with it every time—and the public cheered him for it.

  'And that, Gregory, is the point I want to make. It was the Nation that by the exercise of a free vote put him in power and kept him there. People like you and I who knew a thing or two may have been alarmed at the manner in which he completely ignored the growing power of Hitler, but we didn't want another shilling on the income tax, and we hadn't the guts to vote Socialist; while the people who don't pay income tax were just as much to blame; they took what he said for Gospel because they preferred to watch a football match or go dog-racing rather than take an intelligent interest in the international situation for themselves. You and I and all the other millions of men and women who voted for the Baldwin-MacDonald combine, from 1923 to 1937, are the criminals responsible for the situation of those boys of ours in Lillehammer today. That, Gregory, is the terrible, inescapable truth.'

  Gregory sighed. 'God! What a comment on Democracy!'

  There was little traffic on the long, winding, mountain road except when every few miles it curved down to a place where the valley broadened out and they passed through a village. Occasionally a German aircraft hummed high overhead. They were used to that, since during the whole of their stay in Lillehammer German planes had passed up the valley several times a day on reconnaissance flights; but now Gregory kept a wary eye upon them as he knew that von Ziegler would have reported the presence of British troops in Lillehammer and so at any time the Nazis might start aerial attacks on the British lines of communications.

  By four o'clock in the afternoon they had covered about twenty miles and entered the village of Holmen, to which the doctor had said he meant to evacuate the patients as there was a cottage hospital there, so in the market-place Gregory pulled up. They had passed several detachments of British infantry outside the village and a temporary halt had been made by a battery of artillery in its square, from which Gregory concluded that this was the head of the main column for which the company at Lillehammer was acting as advance guard. While they waited for the other two ambulances to come up Gregory and Gussy got off the driver's seat and, waylaying a lieutenant who was crossing the square, told him what was happening further south.

  The lieutenant said that he was already aware of the situation as a field wireless had just come in to say that the British in Lillehammer were now in actual contact with the enemy, but that they had no need to worry as the main force that had been dispatched down the valley, of which his unit formed part, would soon be moving up in support; then he left them as the order 'prepare to march' was given.

  They watched the column pass and found that it consisted only of a battalion of infantry, a battery of artillery and half a company of R.E.s with a mixed collection of vehicles bringing up the rear; which greatly perturbed Gregory as he had expected that it would be a much larger force—at least a Brigade, or possibly a Division. Its tail end had hardly disappeared when the doctor arrived with the other two ambulances, so Gregory and Gussy went over to him. He was just about to give them directions how to reach the cottage hospital when Gregory said:

  'I don't want to butt in, but there must be another cottage hospital further up the valley, and if I were you I should take your patients on there.'

  'But why?' protested the doctor. 'Your troops were already at Lillehammer when we left and many more of them have just gone by, so the valley will now be held. We may have to put up with air-raids, but apart from that we shall be safe enough with twenty miles between ourselves and the Germans.'

  'Twenty miles is nothing to fast tanks,' said Gregory bluntly; 'they could cover that in an hour; and without wishing to appear disloyal to my own people I doubt very much if these lightly-equipped troops will be able to hold up a German armoured column for long. We must get behind something much heavier before we can consider ourselves really safe.'

  'I see,' replied the doctor thoughtfully. 'In that case, then, perhaps we'd better drive on to Ringebu.'

  Accordingly they proceeded north once more. They had covered about five miles when they heard a faint but distinct thudding behind them and Gregory looked at Gussy.

  'It sounds as though the Boche have spotted that British column and are giving it the works.'

  Gussy nodded. 'That's about it. I wonder, though, that we haven't seen some of our own aircraft by this time.'

  'There's not much hop
e of that, I'm afraid. Von Ziegler told me that they've secured all the landing-grounds in Norway, so the only support that our troops will get is from the Fleet Air Arm in the neighbourhood of the coast.'

  For half an hour they drove on in silence, another German plane droned overhead, then a sudden rat-tat-tat struck their ears. Gregory needed no telling what that meant. It was the sound of machine-guns, and next second a sharp ping-ping-ping of bullets striking on metal came from their immediate rear.

  Gregory was still leading the small convoy and they were running along a low stretch of the road which here was only a few feet above the level of the broad river. The mountains rose steeply to his right but to his left there was a shallow ditch and then a belt of pine-trees between the road and the water. Without an instant's hesitation he swung the ambulance round, charged the ditch and bumped violently over the bank into the fringe of the wooded strip, pulling up with a jerk just before his bonnet came into collision with a tree.

  'Oh, my arm!' gasped Gussy as the ambulance jolted to a halt.

  'You're lucky still to be able to feel it,' muttered Gregory somewhat unsympathetically. 'If I'd stayed on the road another minute we would probably both have been shot through the head.' Scrambling down, he dashed round to the back of the ambulance to see if any of his passengers had been hit.